w o r r i e d a b o u t n o t h i n g

2009-11-13T07:47:00.001Z

2009-11-11T16:19:00.001Z

2009-11-10T16:20:00.001Z

The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims it has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying. The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves. The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organisation's latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies. More...

2009-11-10T12:14:00.003Z

The hopes and prospects for peace aren't well aligned -- not even close. The task is to bring them nearer. Presumably that was the intent of the Nobel Peace Prize committee in choosing President Barack Obama. The prize "seemed a kind of prayer and encouragement by the Nobel committee for future endeavor and more consensual American leadership," Steven Erlanger and Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote in The New York Times. The nature of the Bush-Obama transition bears directly on the likelihood that the prayers and encouragement might lead to progress. The Nobel committee's concerns were valid. They singled out Obama's rhetoric on reducing nuclear weapons. Right now Iran's nuclear ambitions dominate the headlines. The warnings are that Iran may be concealing something from the International Atomic Energy Agency and violating U.N. Security Council Resolution 1887, passed last month and hailed as a victory for Obama's efforts to contain Iran. Meanwhile, a debate continues on whether Obama's recent decision to reconfigure missile-defense systems in Europe is a capitulation to the Russians or a pragmatic step to defend the West from Iranian nuclear attack. Silence is often more eloquent than loud clamor, so let us attend to what is unspoken. More...

2009-11-09T12:29:00.001Z

Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has just announced the world’s biggest bailout for a single bank in a bid to rescue the Royal Bank of Scotland. One year after an initial bailout, the government is to put an additional £25.5 billion into RBS, in which it already has a 74 percent stake. In addition it has set aside a further £8 billion in case the bank runs into further trouble, as is widely expected. While RBS insists it will only use this £8 billion in a dire emergency, the annual fee for this sum indicates a high probability of failure. In order to maintain the fiction that this is still a private and not a publicly owned bank, the government’s additional equity stake, equivalent to a further 12 percent stake, will not have voting rights, allowing RBS to retain its listing on the London Stock Exchange. Despite the bailout, there is to be no attempt to control the bank’s activities. It will be business as usual as far as proprietary trading is concerned—trading in risky financial instruments. More...

2009-11-05T20:42:00.001Z

2009-11-05T20:07:00.000Z

2009-11-05T19:59:00.001Z

I started thinking a few days ago about how the digitization and networking of so much of what we hold dear has changed things. I see that in my lifetime I will witness the end of books, or most of them, physical copies of recorded music and probably physical newspapers too. Stuff that’s been around for a thousand years will be gone in my lifetime! Film based photography is pretty much a remnant, an art form, an artisanal craft used by fine artists and high-end fashion photographers. And writing letters to one another? On paper? And dropping them in the mailbox? When was the last time I wrote and mailed a physical letter? All those academic books filled with Auden’s or Jane Austen’s letters — it’s hard to imagine a collection of someone’s text messages, tweets and e-mails. I suspect that television as we know it will be gone soon as well. All right, film and recorded music have only been around a hundred or so years, but books! All of which led me back to wondering — how did this get started? More...

2009-11-03T12:37:00.000Z

Today orthodox economics is reputedly being harnessed to an entirely new end: saving the planet from the ecological destruction wrought by capitalist expansion. It promises to accomplish this through the further expansion of capitalism itself, cleared of its excesses and excrescences. A growing army of self-styled “sustainable developers” argues that there is no contradiction between the unlimited accumulation of capital — the credo of economic liberalism from Adam Smith to the present — and the preservation of the earth. The system can continue to expand by creating a new “sustainable capitalism,” bringing the efficiency of the market to bear on nature and its reproduction. In reality, these visions amount to little more than a renewed strategy for profiting on planetary destruction. Behind this tragedy-cum-farce is a distorted accounting deeply rooted in the workings of the system that sees wealth entirely in terms of value generated through exchange. In such a system, only commodities for sale on the market really count. External nature — water, air, living species — outside this system of exchange is viewed as a “free gift.” Once such blinders have been put on, it is possible to speak, as the leading U.S. climate economist William Nordhaus has, of the relatively unhindered growth of the economy a century or so from now, under conditions of business as usual — despite the fact that leading climate scientists see following the identical path over the same time span as absolutely catastrophic both for human civilization and life on the planet as a whole. More...

2009-10-31T09:48:00.002Z

Guilt by association

I fell in with a bad crew just before completing high school. Either friends or friends thereof they were contacts for various purposes. As is the case with any middle class urban teenager, there are the cool kids and they usually are the ones who obtrude the various adolescent landscapes. It is necessary to keep company with these lesser elements of society if one wishes to maintain a reliance on substances. There were the core friends that were still the children with whom I attended primary school. Hendo had moved into the area in the first few years of high school and it came to be that he knew people that were regular suppliers. If it was not the case that we would visit his house, he acquired an orange Laser and sometimes delivered. On one occasion I invited him into the house when ordinarily this would never have occurred. One night when I was visiting Trendo for the purpose of avoiding contact within my house, Chas showed up with the same intent. He said he had been passed my house and it looked like my sister was home. I knew that this would not be the case but he said that he'd seen her orange car in the drive on the way. Of course my ears pricked when I understood the situation that might have occurred it Hendo had gone around when my parents were home. When I got home it quickly struck me what would occur if he had gone around when they were not. The front door was open as was the kitchen window, through which he had gained access. Lights were on and the main electrical items had been taken. Knowing that I would have to inform my father and the police of the situation was difficult. However in the state I maintained in those days, it was not such a difficult task. Chas returned to find this situation with me, after I quizzed him to ascertain it was definitely the right car I called Hendo, right after my father. I asked him why he had done such a thing. Simply because he needed to be told I knew. It would have been more convenient had I not.

2009-10-31T09:14:00.001Z

2009-10-25T09:15:00.009Z

Want
girls, motorcycle, boat, projector, flat, canvas, paint, smoke, studio, british passport, direct film, european rail card, holiday to cancun, girlfriend, new job, not submit to lesser agendum, accidentally inherit fortune, world peace, poverty abolished, capitalists executed, climate change addressed, sustainability, modes of production socialised, new wardrobe, wings, super power, longevity

Need
residence, money, smiles, food, exercise, music, gear supply, creativity encouraged, ideas, reality counselling, enduring quality relationships, urges satisfied, clothes, reliable friends, not be fickle, another holiday, education, family, communication, concern, compassion, less internet

2009-10-24T06:54:00.006Z

Grievance

Just want to forward this on for your information. I wish to see this resolved without further HR intervention but understand it wise to have it recorded that I feel bullied. The impression I received initially from Moron was that I brought about a storm in a tea cup. I am deeply concerned being the only male in this team that problems I've raised are devalued as the secretaries are 'buddies'. Since Moron has been my line manager I have been severely reprimanded on more than two occasions in the past four months. I find this unusual as I've never experienced this type of micromanagement. The first occasion I received an abusive email for leaving my shift, literally, two minutes early – when on that day and previous to this occasion, I used to arrive and sign in, ten to fifteen minutes early. Secondly, I was castigated for leaving shifts one hour early on several imaginary occasions. Moron came in on her day off to abuse me. When I tried to convey the situation to Moron she did not listen to what was being said. I asked for an HR representative to be present, or X2, though she did not follow through. I implored her to check the log in times, yet she continued to yell at me on the basis of gossip. I actually had to shout 'You are not listening to me'. Fortuitously, I had an email to cover myself and she subsequently relented. Why she had, and has, not checked pertinent facts prior to action is beyond me. Moron shrugged off her mistake as 'two sides to every story', an apology absent. She would not advise me who spread the rumours, whereas it is obvious that I am the source for resolving the aforementioned diminishment of standards. I am concerned how my under noted email was regurgitated to Fat&StupidOne. Moron told me the situation boils down to 'he said, she said'. Whereas I do not agree. The log in times and statistics do not lie, there is little opinion involved, with basic investigation this can be verified to be wholly factual. Paradoxically, the absence of key performance indicators makes the job a void for performance appraisal. Yesterday, after I advised Moron the team were, again, completing the job incorrectly, I had Fat&StupidTwo come in to tell me how to file and index – when I've completed the task faultlessly for over two years. Today I've clarified this information with the 'supposed source' and Fat&StupidTwo was non-plussed to find out she had imparted the wrong info. She asked me why I was telling her and declined that I forward the email to set her straight. Her response was that she had been here ten years. I can tell you, categorically, the standard of archiving has plummeted since X's departure. Finally, Moron has told me my concerns have been logged with yourself, X2 and corporate headquarter human resources. I am worried how limited, or one-sided, the content might be that has been onsent. It has been an uphill struggle to have basic matters addressed. It seems straight forward to summate that they've been glossed over due to the relationships of those concerned. This afternoon I am going to see my Doctor about this situation. Much has been expected from me since the integration with secretaries. I was burdened with over a month of overtime as there were no other options. I was required to train the whole team to perform my role. With consideration for the above, and below, I am reluctant to supervise fellow staff. I have, for the best part, managed but the events of the past two months prove silence is counter productive. Raising further issues with Moron is simply going to cause more problems as she hasn't the relevant managerial expertise. This communication serves the purpose, solely, to advise you as this ongoing overwhelming and unnecessary spike in stress.

2009-10-23T11:36:00.000Z

2009-10-23T11:32:00.001Z

REM, Pearl Jam and Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor are among the musicians who have joined a new campaign pressuring US politicians to close the Guantánamo Bay detention centre. Many of these artists joined the movement after discovering their music had been used to torture those held there by the American military. Launched on Tuesday, Close Gitmo Now is a coalition of activists, artists and retired generals who back president Obama's plan to close the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba. Besides the acts listed above, its backers also include Billy Bragg, Roseanne Cash, Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello, Jackson Browne, Steve Earle and Bonnie Raitt. "At Guantánamo, the US government turned a jukebox into an instrument of torture," said Thomas Blanton, executive director of the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute that is one of the campaign's main backers. Several references to music as an interrogation tool appeared in a US senate report last year. Records were used to "stress" Mohamedou Ould Slahi during questioning in 2003, including repeated plays of a song by hard-rockers Drowning Pool. Other tracks that were reportedly played at high volume near prisoners include David Gray's Babylon, Metallica's Enter Sandman, Don McLean's American Pie, Queen's We Will Rock You, songs by REM, Pearl Jam, Nine Inch Nails, Bruce Springsteen, and even theme tunes from Sesame Street, Barney the Dinosaur and the Meow Mix commercials. More...

2009-10-18T09:29:00.000Z

2009-10-15T12:27:00.001Z

Every powerful state relies on specialists whose task is to show that what the strong do is noble and just and, if the weak suffer, it is their fault. In the West, these specialists are called "intellectuals" and, with marginal exceptions, they fulfill their task with skill and self-righteousness, however outlandish the claims, in this practice that traces back to the origins of recorded history. With just that much background, let us turn to the so-called unipolar moment. Symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago, the collapse of the Soviet Union putatively left a unipolar world, with the United States as the sole global superpower and not merely the primary superpower, as it was before. Within months, the George H. W. Bush administration outlined Washington's new course: Everything will stay much the same, but with new pretexts. We still need a huge military system, but for a new reason: the "technological sophistication" of Third World powers. We have to maintain the "defense industrial base" -- a euphemism for state-supported high-tech industry. We must maintain intervention forces directed at the energy-rich Middle East -- where the significant threats to our interests "could not be laid at the Kremlin's door," contrary to decades of deceit. All this was passed over quietly, barely reported. But for those who hope to understand the world, it is quite instructive. More...

2009-10-14T11:19:00.000Z

The US Senate Finance Committee voted Tuesday to approve health care legislation that, if implemented, will slash health care benefits for millions of Americans. The Baucus plan, named for committee chairman Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, passed in a 14-9 vote. Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine joined with all 13 Democratic committee members to support the bill, with the 9 remaining Republicans voting to oppose it. President Obama praised the Finance Committee vote as a “critical milestone in our effort to reform our health care system.” The Baucus plan is the legislation largely favored by the administration. The estimated cost of measure is $829 billion over 10 years, but it is expected to reduce the deficit by $81 billion due mainly to cuts in government health care programs. The bill meets Obama’s criterion that any health plan must be “deficit neutral” and not add “one dime” to the federal budget deficit. This from an administration that has overseen the bailout of the banks—with no strings attached—at an potential liability of over $23 trillion. More...

2009-10-13T19:58:00.001Z

With the home mortgage crisis dragging along, consumer borrowing still lagging, and crises looming in other sectors like commercial real estate, Wall Street is desperate for a new product to kick-start securities markets. It appears as though the savior may be riding in on a pale horse. According to a September 5 New York Times article, banks like Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs are exploring new investment schemes that involve buying up life insurance policies from sick and elderly people, bundling them into huge securities, and selling shares in the securities to investors. Buying shares is essentially a bet--that the people whose insurance policies on which the securities are based will die "on time" or earlier than expected. According to the Times, "The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return--though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money." More...

2009-10-12T20:24:00.000Z

2009-10-08T11:25:00.001Z